Main Book Room Sale
In our main room, prices are way below what used book stores charge.
Paperbacks are 50 cents and up, and hardcovers are $1.00 and up. Numbered
tickets for the main room are given out beginning at 8 am on Saturday.
These reserve your place in the line that forms before the 11 am opening.
Each person may pick up one or two tickets.

Children's Books in K6
Room K6 in the K wing (see
map) is
entirely filled with children's books and toys. This room hosts the
special collection of picture books from a collector's estate. It also has
many other picture books,
school age fiction, award winners, non-English titles, and books for parents and teachers,
many for under $1. This room and the bargain room open at 10 am.

Bargain Books in K7
Next door in K7 is the bargain room, where paperbacks
are 50 cents, hardcovers
are $1.00, and children's books are just 25 cents each. Pay just half of that in the bargain room after 12:30 pm on
Saturday and all day on Sunday. On Sunday, you can also buy grocery
bags in the bargain room for $5 and fill them with books.

Featured items for November:

"Mint condition"
Anthropologyand Sociology books

Books by/about Nobel Prize winners

Some Pinter plays

A ten-year collectionof New Yorker Magazines

Lots of December Holiday books

Computer Books

And much, much more!

4000 Middlefield Road
Palo AltoNear the northwest end of the Cubberley Community Center

Various
events are scheduled in December to celebrate the Children's Library
renovation. The building is scheduled to close on December 17
for about two years.

Veteran's Day Holiday

The library will be closed on Friday, November 11 for the Veteran's Day Holiday.

Non-Profit Book Giveaway

We continue to give bargain room books after the sale to many local non-profit organizations and
schools.
The giveaway this month is from 4 to 6 pm on Sunday, November 13.
More
information.

Search All California
Libraries at Once

You can now use the free
California Library Catalog to search the collections of 1,221 libraries in
California all at once. Use this to find books, DVDs, and other items that
aren't in the Palo Alto library but may be
at some other library in the Bay Area or California. You'll also soon be able to search this catalog from Google, Yahoo, and
other search services and then even locate the nearest libraries that have
the item you seek by including your zip code. These new services come
from a joint project of the California State Library, Califa (a consortium
of California libraries), and OCLC (the Online Computer Library Center).
More information.

Suggestions?

We're always eager to hear your suggestions for ways to
improve our book sale. Please email them to us at suggestions@friendspaloaltolib.org
or mention them to a volunteer at the sale.

Collector Donates Children's Books

We received a large donation this past month of beautiful
childrenís picture books from the estate of a childrenís book collector.
Most are first editions, in perfect condition, and represent a broad cross
section of authors and illustrators of the last two decades. These books
will make excellent gifts for children or teachers and will be featured in
the Childrenís Room (K6) at this month's sale.

Public Meeting to Discuss Library
Changes on November 9

The library will hold a community meeting on Wednesday, November 9 at
the Downtown Branch
Library at 270 Forest Avenue to present plans to shrink the public area of
the Downtown Branch to accommodate more staff. This will be the first
opportunity for the public to see the plans since the project was announced
early this year. There will also be an opportunity for library
users to suggest priorities for services, programs, and collections to
improve the branch. Refreshments will be served. A similar meeting will be held on
December 6 for the Main Library changes.

Preview our Bookshelves

Check out some of the 54,000 books we'll have for sale this month via our
preview pictures,
organized by categories. We apologize that we can't take pictures of every
shelf and more donations are still coming in.

At the meeting, representative from Google described many special features of Google search beyond the usual ones.
A list of all the techniques they presented is at
Google Features.

Booksale Helps Katrina Victims

To aid victims of recent hurricane Katrina, the Friends of the Palo Alto
Library booksale donated over the last two months several hundred children's books to
restock school libraries in Louisiana. Friends of Library groups from
all around the country have been sending donated books to public libraries,
school libraries, and shelters in the affected areas.

Library Survey Discussion Scheduled
for November
10

The research firm preparing the upcoming library survey will meet with
the community at 7 pm on Thursday, November 10 at the Art Center Auditorium
at 1313 Newell Road. Godbe Research will present the Library's
objectives, describe the survey methodology, and solicit suggestions from
the community as to other objectives that the survey might include.
The survey will be conducted later this year among a random sample of Palo
Altans, with results and recommendations presented to the City Council in
early 2006 by the Library Advisory Commission. Refreshments will be
served at the meeting.

Library Issues Annual
Report

The Palo Alto library recently released its
annual report for the 2004-2005 fiscal year. Perhaps due to some
temporary closures during the year, library visits declined 1% and circulation went
down
2.5% from the previous year. Total attendance at library programs and
special events fell by 8%, although more programs
were held. 9,577 new titles were added to the library collection, but
this was down about 10% from the previous year. The library purchases about two copies
on average of each
title and owns a total of 264,511 items.

More
and more people are using the library's computer resources. Logins to
online magazine collections, encyclopedias, language training, and other
resources rose a spectacular 643% to 465 a day. Catalog
searches rose to 708,703, which is more than one for every two items checked
out. 80,575 holds were placed, almost three times as many as in the
prior year. Internet sessions on library computers (not including
library-supplied laptops) climbed by 18% to about 312 per day.
Self-check machines are increasingly popular and accounted for 35% of
checkouts at the two branches with them.

Library volunteerism
rose to the equivalent of about
3.75 full-time staff members, and this was accomplished with fewer volunteers,
each averaging about 3.5 hours a month.

Palo Alto library
users are asking fewer questions of library staff, continuing a long-term
and nationwide trend. Users made 136,616 reference and research inquiries in 2004-2005, down 15% from the previous year.

The
library doesn't report the total number of active library cards, but 7%
more were issued this year than last. Among just Palo Alto residents,
those with Palo Alto City Library cards rose 7% over last year while those
with cards from neighboring city libraries fell by 5%.

Song Celebrates Booksale

Here's a tongue-in-cheek song about the booksale as performed by the Friends
of the Palo Alto Library Singers at this year's annual meeting:

And All Those Books!
To the tune of And All That Jazz
With apologies to Kander and Ebb

Verse 1 (C major)

C'mon babe, why donít we hit the sale?

And all those books!

Iím gonna check each room, and plumb each bargain bale,

And all those books!

Bring a truck - Iíll find a parking spot,

The selectionís huge, but the price is not.

Itís just a crowded hall, where thereís a monthly brawl,

And all - those - books!

Verse 2 (D flat major)

Get in line, before itís 2 am,

For all those books!

Youíll meet the
nicest folks, and get to bond with them,

And all those books!

Rush right in, and let the bargains fly,

Till your tab is full and your creditís dry.

You bought a hundred bags, and now your bumper drags

From all - those - books!

Refrain (D major)

Take
- whenever youíre outside a real deep breath,

And all those books,

O-therwise the lack of air will cause your death.

And all those books.

If you wander from your aisle,

Someone else will grab your pile.

Itís so hot, they chill the spot

For all
- those - books.

Verse 3 (C major)

Once youíre home, youíre really horrified,

With all those books.

Itís gonna take ten years to merely look inside,

All those books.

Thereís no hope, what are you
gonna do,

For youíve filled your house, and your warehouse too?

Itís lookiní pretty black - youíd better donate back

All - those
- books.

This notice comes to you from the non-profit organization
Friends of the Palo Alto Library. No trees were felled in the making of
this e-mail. While the Better Business Bureau recommends that no more
than 35% of a charitable organization's expenses be for management and
fundraising expenses, ours were only 2.9% for our 2004-2005 fiscal year. In other words,
about 97% of the
money we raised went to help Palo Alto Library users. Visit our web
site. Become a member
by joining online.

Be sure to receive your own free copy of this e-mail notice so that you'll know
about all special upcoming books sales. To sign up, just e-mail
us. We carefully protect the privacy of your e-mail address. We
will not share your e-mail address with any other organization and we will not
use it for any purpose other than to send you these notices. If you do not
wish to receive these e-mail notices in the future, please
reply with the words "Remove Me" in the subject line.